find a penny, pick it up

“Sometimes I think the cement of my being was taken from one cultural mould before it cured and was forced into other moulds, one after the other, retaining bits of the form of each but producing a finished sculpture that fitted into none.”

–Sophia Morton

Abolitionist Christmas

If you're looking for Christmas presents, here's a great idea. I have an amazingly creative friend who has been asking people to design greeting cards and is selling to cards to raise money for the Not For Sale Campaign. The cards are 12 for $6 or 24 for $12, and over half of the profits go to helping women who have survived sex trafficking. The cards are absolutely beautiful (I've seen them) and very unique. If you're interested you can look at the designs and email Sarah (sarahd@notforsale.org) if you'd like to give the cards to someone for Christmas.

The Journey Installation

You can see pictures of the installation that Emma Thompson worked on with Bondage for Freedom here.

They're pretty powerful.

I love this melding of art and activism.

Emma Thompson's Journey

Someone wonderful showed me this video of an installation that Emma Thompson worked on with a survivor of sex trafficking in the United Kingdom. The train car installation was on display in Trafalgar Square in London In September 2007. This is a short video but it walks you through the journey into sex slavery in a very visual and impacting way.

Slumdog Millionaire

I finally saw "Slumdog Millionaire" last night. Everyone had been telling me that I would love it, but I thought that it was already out of the theaters so I had given up hope of seeing it before it was released on DVD. But miracle of miracles it was still playing in a theater nearby and I SAW IT!

And it was really wonderful.

It's filmed so artistically that it would be beautiful to watch even if it had a terrible plot and characters, and MIA did a lot of the soundtrack, which made me extremely happy.

I loved the kids; I loved two hours of voices talking with musical, beautiful accents; I loved the overwhelming color and movement, and the huge crowds of people, that portray India so perfectly to me; I especially loved the scene in which Salim was refiling and resealing water bottles to sell to unknowing tourists.

Anyway, I thought it was fantastic.